How the score estimate works
A full-length exam on ATP Quest ends with a score estimate, not an AAMC score. This page is the whole method: the table that converts your answers, what the range covers, and what none of it can tell you.
In short
- Each section's raw score is the number you got right. A blank counts as wrong, as it does on the exam.
- That share of the section is converted to a score from 118 to 132 with one fixed table. The four sections add up to a total from 472 to 528.
- The range around each score is the sampling error of one sitting: how far the same learner's score could move on a different set of questions. A section with fewer questions has a wider range.
- The estimate has not been checked against real scores yet. When it has, the measured error is shown here and on the Exams screen.
The conversion table
One table for every section. Between two rows, the score rises in a straight line, then is rounded to a whole number.
| Answered correctly | Section score (118 to 132) |
|---|---|
| 0% | 118 |
| 30% | 118 |
| 45% | 121 |
| 60% | 124 |
| 75% | 127 |
| 85% | 129.5 |
| 93% | 131 |
| 97% | 132 |
| 100% | 132 |
It is flat at 118 up to 30%, about chance plus a little. It then rises about two points for every ten percent through the middle, and flattens near the top so a few misses still reach 131 or 132. It encodes only that shape. It is not fitted to the AAMC's conversions.
What the range covers
The range is one sitting's sampling error, from the number of questions in the section and where your score sits on the table. It is never narrower than 1 point for a section, or 2 for the total, so a lucky run never reads as certainty.
The total is the four section scores added, and its range combines the four section ranges, then is kept inside 472 to 528. A section sat alone gets its own estimate and no total.
A worked example
Not anyone's score. Take a section of 59 questions with 40 right, which is 68%. The table gives a section score of 126, and the sampling error of 59 questions puts the likely range at 123 to 129.
What it cannot tell you
- The AAMC converts each exam form with tables it does not publish, so no outside exam can reproduce its scores. This is an estimate on ATP Quest's own scale.
- ATP Quest's questions are original and are not matched to the difficulty of the AAMC's.
- The range covers sampling error only. It does not cover the error in the table itself.
- It has not been checked against real scores yet. It will be, and the measured error will be shown here when it is.
- One exam is thin evidence. A full-length is 230 questions and 6 h 15 of testing, and one sitting can swing on sleep and on the questions that came up.
For the closest check, sit the AAMC's
The AAMC's own practice exams are written by the people who write the test and scored on its real scale. They are the best check of whether you are ready, and the one thing ATP Quest cannot replace. Buy them, and sit them in your last weeks.